The Mask of Red Death

Suspense, intrigue, atmosphere, and vivid historical detail combine into a thrilling ride through nineteenth-century New York City in "The Mask of Red Death." Harold Schechter delivers both a wonderfully accurate portrait of a city in turmoil and an irresistibly appealing depiction of his amateur sleuth Edgar Allan Poe, mirroring the master's writing style with wit and acumen.
It is the sweltering summer of 1845, and the thriving metropolis has fallen victim to a creature of the most inhuman depravity. Found days apart, two girls have been brutally murdered, their throats slashed, viciously scalped, and-most shocking of all-missing their livers. Edgar Allan Poe, despite what the tenor of his own tales of terror might suggest about his constitution, is just as shaken and revolted by these horrendous crimes as the panic-stricken public. Suspicion of the scalper's identity immediately swirls around the most famous "redskin" in New York, Chief Wolf Bear, one of the human attractions at P.T. Barnum's American Museum. Certain that Chief Wolf Bear is innocent, Poe has deduced that the city is concealing a cannibal somewhere in its teeming masses, one with an ever-growing appetite for human prey.
Before he can investigate his theory further, Poe stumbles onto the scene of a third gruesome murder. Poe recently met William Wyatt when he agreed to look at a document for Wyatt to determine the authenticity of the purportedly famous handwriting on it. Now Poe finds Wyatt in a pool of blood, his scalp removed. How, Poe muses, are Wyatt and his document connected to the two slain girls?
As frenzied emotions over the murders reach a fevered pitch, Kit Carson makes an appearance. The famous scout has been tracking the "Liver Eater" since the man killed his wife months ago. Together, Carson and Poe make an odd sleuthing team, but their combined wits are formidable. The trail they uncover reveals a dark secret more powerful than anything they could have imagined- one that may reach the upper echelons of politics and privilege.

Chapter One

There are certain subjects in which the interest is all-absorbing. In our own country, stories of frontier captivity—of Western pioneers taken prisoner by the Indians—have always exerted a singular fascination. From the days of the earliest settlers, firsthand accounts by survivors of this harrowing ordeal have invariably been among the most popular of all our literary productions, as even a cursory glance at the shelves of any bookseller on Broadway will readily confirm.

Not long ago (I am composing this in the summer of 1846), no fewer than five of these volumes were sent to me for review. In accordance with convention, each of these books featured an exceedingly sensational title, promising a tale of Extraordinary Hardship!—Unprecedented Adventure!—Uncommon Suffering!—and Remarkable Deliverance! Unsurprisingly, all five proved, upon perusal, to be entirely devoid of aesthetic value. And yet, in spite of their many egregious flaws, each became an immediate commercial success—a circumstance bound to be a source of the keenest vexation to any true literary artist whose own infinitely superior works have failed to receive the recognition (and remuneration) they deserve.

What was it about these books—I was left to ponder—what was it that accounted for their inordinate appeal? The answer, I concluded, resides in a peculiarity of our nature that—however shameful to confess—is unquestionably as old as our species itself. I refer, of course, to the innate human appetite for stories involving bloodshed and cruelty. Whatever other thrilling or suspenseful incidents may be found in narratives of Indian captivity, such books depend for the greatest impact on their graphic portrayal of the ghastly horrors of frontier combat—and, in particular, on the unspeakable tortures to which helpless prisoners are routinely subjected by their savage foes!

Even today, there are images I retain from these books that are impossible to banish from my mind. How shall I ever forget the dreadful scene in the memoirs of John Roger Tanner when his young comrade, Toby Squires, is strung up by his wrists and flayed alive by a gloating Iroquois chieftain? Or the equally gruesome moment in the narrative of the French fur-trader Jean Laframboise, when he is forced to consume a bleeding collop of his own flesh, sliced from his leg by an Apache tormentor? Or—most horrific of all—the episode recounted by Captain John Salter, in which a Comanche brave tortures a captive by making a small incision in the poor man’s abdomen, removing one end of the small intestine, nailing it to a wooden post, and forcing the victim to run in a circle until his entrails are completely unwound! The mere recitation of these atrocities is enough to suffuse my bosom with a tumultuous mix of emotions, compounded equally of dread—revulsion—and rapt fascination.

It is, of course, horrors such as these that have fixed in the popular mind a lasting impression of the Western wilderness as a realm, not merely of sublime natural beauty, but of ever-present mortal peril, and of its aboriginal inhabitants as creatures of unsurpassed savagery, whose ingenuity in devising diabolical methods of torture outdoes even the infernal cruelties of the Inquisitors of Toledo. And yet it may be argued that, in committing even the most hideous outrages, the Indian is engaging in behavior wholly consistent with the primordial harshness of his natural surroundings—indeed, that his rituals of torture and bloodshed are perfectly in keeping with the ethical and even religious conceptions of his kind. In short, judged by the standards of his own tribal beliefs, such acts are not merely acceptable but positively honorable.

The same claim can hardly be made for those members of the white race who engage in similar atrocities; for it can scarcely be doubted (as the reader of these pages will quickly discover) that such creatures do in fact exist. Indeed, if there was any lesson to be gleaned from the grim—the ghastly—the appalling—events that took place in Manhattan slightly more than one year ago, it was this: that, of all savage beings, the most deplorable is not the untamed Indian but the civilized man who reverts to outright barbarism; and that, for all the violence and brutality endemic to life on the frontier, no place on earth can match the ugliness—the evil—the sheer unspeakable depravity—to be found in the city!

In attempting to reconstruct an extraordinary occurrence from the past, the historian is often struck by the disparity between the ultimate magnitude of the event and its mundane beginnings. So it was with the singularly shocking affair that held the great metropolis in thrall during the spring of 1845. It began on a Wednesday afternoon in the latter part of May. I was seated at my desk in the office of Mr. Charles Frederick Briggs’s recently established magazine, the Broadway Journal. Even for that time of year, the weather was inordinately warm, if not positively sultry. Apart from the unseasonable heat, however, there was nothing else remarkable about the day—certainly nothing to suggest that it would mark the beginning of one of the most unique and startling episodes in the annals of New York City crime!

I had arrived at the office, as was my habit, at precisely ten o’clock that morning, and had spent the day composing various items for inclusion in the forthcoming number of the magazine: a lengthy review of Mr. Joseph Holt Ingraham’s mildly entertaining (if woefully improbable and poorly written) novel, Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf—a short article on Professor Henry Horncastle’s recent, remarkably misinformed lecture on mesmerism at the Society Library—a devastating exposé of Mr. Longfellow’s numerous, flagrant plagiarisms from my own poetical works—and an amusing vignette on the picturesque shanties of the poor Irish squatters who reside on the periphery of the city. For nearly five successive hours, I applied myself assiduously to my work, taking only a short respite to refresh myself with the simple but exceedingly nutritious lunch of cheese, brown bread, and strawberries, prepared for me by my ever-devoted Muddy (the affectionate cognomen by which I referred to my Aunt Maria Clemm, whose angelic daughter, Virginia, I was blessed to call my wife).

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have continued at my labors until the daylight had begun to wane. So oppressive was the heat, however, that, by midafternoon, I felt myself lapsing into a kind of stupor. As I was completely alone in the office—my employer, Mr. Briggs, having gone off for the day on a business errand—I was under no obligation to maintain a strictly punctilious appearance. Even with my jacket removed, my cravat loosened, and my collar undone, however, I found myself perspiring so freely that rivulets of moisture were continuously trickling down my forehead and stinging my eyes. Throwing open the window beside my desk did little to alleviate my discomfort. If anything, the cacophony thus admitted—the clatter of the wagons—the rattle of the omnibuses—the shouts and oaths of the teamsters and hackmen—the cries of the street-vendors—only rendered sustained concentration even more difficult, if not impossible.

At length—unable to carry on productively under such intolerable circumstances—I decided to quit the office for the day and return home. After putting my desk in order, I rose from my chair, threw on my jacket, and departed, taking along a handsomely bound volume that had arrived earlier that day by post. This was a work entitled Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains, composed by a personage heretofore unknown to me by the name of Samuel Parker. My intention was to peruse this book after dinner in the comfort of my home in preparation for reviewing it on the morrow.

Emerging onto Broadway, I was struck anew by the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, which felt like nothing so much as the airless heat of the tropical Brazilian jungles as vividly described by the infamous Lope de Aguirre in his colorful (if often prolix) letters to King Philip of Spain. Indeed, I noted little discernible difference between the temperature outside on the street and that of the cramped and suffocating office I had just fled.

It might be supposed that the enervating effects of the weather had induced a general torpor in the population of the metropolis. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth. The oppressive heat had in no way slowed or even seriously moderated the frenzied bustle of both the vehicular and pedestrian traffic on the great thoroughfare. Throwing myself into the dense and continuous tide of humanity rushing along the sidewalk, I bent my steps toward home.

My route led me past the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, the site—as every New Yorker knows—of the city’s most celebrated place of public amusement. I refer, of course, to Mr. P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, home to one of the world’s largest collections of natural marvels—scientific wonders—historical relics—zoological specimens (both living and stuffed)—and human curiosities. Several months had elapsed since I had last set eyes on the self-styled “King of Showmen,” who had recently arrived back on these shores following a triumphant tour of the European capitals. I had been pleased to find that my old comrade (who—whatever his other defects of character—had always displayed the greatest consideration to my family) had not forgotten us in his absence; for, shortly after his return, we had received a large wicker basket from the showman containing a delicious assortment of mouthwater- ing delicacies: Belgian chocolates, English tea-biscuits, French preserves, and more. I had replied with a gracious letter of thanks, promising to pay him...